patchwork fate
by rwbyfics
Summary: "Blake," She asks very seriously. "What do you think of the word fate?" Taking requests at rwbyficsonffn on Tumblr.


There's more scar than soft tissue covering Blake.

It's the first thing that Yang notices, through hazy clouded eyes, while this strange girl is slipping out of her coat from across the room. She sheds layers as smoothly and methodically as a snake; necklace, earrings, shoes, until she's standing in front of Yang, fingers looped at the collar of her shirt. There's no teasing seduction behind her movements, only an unwavering steadiness - she's wholly centered.

Blake had been introduced to Yang's group of friends earlier in the night, and her introduction was starless. Her only descriptor was that she was a Faunus, the word artlessly thrown into the conversation before she even had the chance to give her name. Yang tried not to roll her eyes at the blunt, classless way her acquaintances changed after they realized Blake was a Faunus.

She noticed all the looks of pity and slight apprehension that a few people cast towards Blake's direction, the kind that was usually accompanied by pouting, clucking tongues and words of hollow sympathy.

Yang had been on the other end of those looks at Summer's funeral, a long time ago. It seemed so long ago that it felt like a dream.

But this girl, Blake, with pithy eyes and fingers that gripped her short glass with slow, quiet strength, struck Yang as someone who didn't require the compassion of strangers to survive. She liked that. It was pretty impressive, she had to say, that Blake had managed to stay emotionally flatlined through the entire night.

Their cautious dance had Yang reeling out of the sheer curiosity of it all, when amidst the senseless chatter in the bar, Blake's slitted pupils had remained evenly fixed on the small mark above Yang's collarbones. She seemed to be studying the exact angle where the blemish started and ended with intense, thoughtful eyes.

By their second round of drinks, Yang had already pushed beside the narrow cattiness of Blake's gaze and the telling twitches of the velvet bow cresting her head, and was more interested forming some idea of the type of person that Blake was.

Blake moved with the fluidity of water, but fire lived in her eyes, in the warm, honey-coated coals fringed by feather long lashes. Her slit pupils shone bright, nearly preternatural in the bar's faded lighting. The only thing she seemed to be sparse in was wood and earth, the certain compassion that some seemed to carry in their bamboo limbs and fingers.

But the metal in Blake seemed to be the strongest. It wasn't just the silver spangling at her neck and hands and ears, but the way that the light persistently caught every reflected ray, collected it and set it at the caveats of her cheekbones and temples, with the same care that artisans settled diamonds in hollowed crests of gold, waiting to be filled and completed.

In the hotel bar, she and Yang had exchanged sparing words. Blake seemed politely bored; her eyes opened to the sides in coaxed interest rather than upwards in true delight. When Yang and Blake did speak to each other, the Faunus girl only had sharp little barbs of conversation for her, tactfully coy enough that Yang wondered if they were even getting along in the first place.

Still, they magnetized towards each other, sitting next to each other at the table, pressing their shoulders and legs together too many times to be deemed accidents. The first stroke of Blake's stockinged foot against Yang's ankle had her halfway across the lobby, already pulling out her wallet to book a room upstairs.

But now, in the half light, as she's pulling the zipper of Blake's dress down, Yang sees the scars that were easily hidden behind silk and diamonds, her piecemeal patchwork knuckles, the knotted gnarls of knife gouges near the backs of her arms.

When Blake lets the collar of her dress kiss the carpet of the floor, Yang gasps under her breath. The largest scar lies at the crest of her curving sternum, and it's about the size of two fingers curled under each other, knotted and raised and hardened with the pink tint of new skin.

Yang touches it reverently, almost kneeling on the ground so she can get a proper angle of the mark. Blake sucks in a breath at the warmth of her hands.

"No way…"

"Gunshot that got infected." Blake offers as an explanation. There's no bravado in her words; her tone is as lukewarm as her expression. Yang raises her brows, scratching behind her ear a little nervously. She's still fully dressed, but somehow feels more exposed than Blake, who stands like a warrior at rest in her lingerie.

"Shit," Yang laughs suddenly, biting her lip. She frowns and peers at it closely. "Looks like a .68 entry." Blake raises her brows in surprise.

"How'd you know?"

Yang smiles up at her.

"I've been using the same slugs since I was thirteen years old. I've also had to dig a couple of those out of a few family members." Her grin is almost blinding. "I know my shotgun shells, babe." She kneels properly and presses her thumb to it. Her touch is tentative but interested. "Did you at least get to keep the bullet?"

Blake shakes her head and bends her head to stare at the scar, midnight hair fanning across her shoulders. "It's still in there. The doctor thought it would splinter if we dug it out. Still," Blake laughs under her breath, looking up. "The TSA officials at the airport aren't so easy to convince." Yang chuckles at the small joke; it's a singular little offering to break the ice between them.

"They don't think 'bullet in my person' is a good excuse, hmm?" Yang drawls, then pauses before letting her tone dip lower into the register of secretivity. "You must be a pretty bad girl if you got shot somewhere that important." Her eyes linger on the shiny coils of flesh purpling near Blake's thighs and wrists, pink knots where fresh scars were already arriving. Fingers brush across the blemishes and bruises, up along her hips to cradle her waist.

"Looks like you still are."

Blake tilts her head and a thin column of veins climbs higher and higher up the side of her throat. They're like vines, and Yang's teeth itch to climb them with care. It's distracting and maddening since Blake is inches away and they haven't even kissed yet.

"C'mere." Blake's voice is limber in the space between them, and Yang stands until they're eye-level. Blake's gripping the front of unbuttoning Yang's blouse, slipping her out of her skirt with practiced hands. There's a few kisses scattered onto her skin in between motions - Yang falls onto the bed with Blake on top of her - and when her shirt is fully parted, Blake laughs for the first time in the whole night.

"You're kidding."

Yang grins lazily.

"I know."

It's Blake's turn to touch a scar now, and Yang's got it in the exact same place where Blake's got hers, almost as wide, but tinted red around the edges. Blake shoves Yang's shirt open wider to look down at it properly. Now that Blake looks at it, it reminds her more of a spiderweb than anything, with its scarlet edges stretching into the veins of her chest.

"What happened?"

Yang covers Blake's hand with hers and lets her press down on it a little harder. It feels taut and warm, like every other inch of Yang, but different somehow. It's like holding Gambol Shroud after it splutters a pistol shot into the air and the gunmetal heats between her fingertips; the effect of it is powerful and thrilling.

"A Dust crystal ended up imploding while I was sparring with my uncle." Yang says through a blinding grin. That explains the warmth and color of it, Blake thinks. It was probably a fire elemental by the looks of it. Blake's well-versed in the art of exploding Dust crystals. What are the odds that the complete stranger that she's straddling is too?

There's breathless quiet where they both take the time to look at the small details that got lost under the broad hazy net of alcohol and mood lighting, like the small beauty mark above Yang's lip, smudged and softened by time like a mistaken kohl mark and the fisherman's net tangle of birthmarks where the top of Blake's arm meets the soft skin of her shoulder.

Blake twists her hand down through Yang's hair, watches as she licks her lips and sighs through her teeth. Yang doesn't mind. She's always liked being watched. The next time Blake touches her, she purrs into the hand near her cheek, tilting her head forward to snap at her fingers playfully. This isn't how Yang's usual one night stands go; the process of it reminds her of basement fumblings with her high school girlfriends through breathless, ecstatic laughter.

Blake's bent knees bracket her waist, and the Faunus girl leans down onto her palms to stare down at Blake. Her hair curtains over them, midnight moons meeting sunrises and sunsets, black mingling with gold. Yang's never described a smile as private before, but this one is too quiet and too close to be called anything else.

She brushes a tangle of Blake's hair from her elegant shoulder, watches the strands fall and flutter along the backs of her fingers. The pressure of her fingers is barely nonexistent, a faint afterthought of contact as Yang slips her hand upwards towards Blake's neck.

Blake tenses immediately and Yang knows why - letting someone that close to your pulse was a death wish even if pleasure was a promise away - but she moves past her heartbeat and slots her fingers behind Blake's ear, thumbs along her jawline. The exploration of her body is slow but steady, and it feels rather effortless when Yang shoves Blake's right knee away from her and switches their positions so that she can straddle Blake.

Their first kiss is close-mouthed and easy. Everything between them happens so slowly that it surprises Yang, how she wants to take her time with Blake instead of rushing mindlessly into the lustful crossfire where fingertips and lips and slips all felt the same against flushed skin.

Blake is the first person that Yang's wanted to really revel in, and she prays to a number of gods that Blake can't tell that she's shakingly nervous. She's used to fumbling with bra straps and initiating sloppy, grinding kisses, but this slow, gradual move, the _exposure_ of it all - it's nerve wracking.

Blake pulls away and Yang notices her pulse jump high in her throat. Honey gold irises flash for a second before thin filament pupils expand, replacing amber with dilating blackness. Blake tips her head back and tugs on the harboring strands of Yang's hair to initiate a deeper, longer kiss.

Yang groans a bit when Blake grasps for her waist; her hand is firm and wanting as she pulls them flush against each other. The laugh that falls from Blake's mouth is wanton but pretty; her throat flexes and relaxes, eyes shut, mouth curved into a slowly unfurling smile. Warmth pools languidly through the Faunus's limbs.

They part so that Yang can pull off her shirt and toss it aside, and instantly, she's reaching for Blake and crashing their open, wanting mouths together. Blake's hand explores the flat planes of Yang's stomach, pauses and admires the muscle hidden beneath her tanned skin before squeezing the places where her flesh had more give and yield.

Blake sits up, her fingers tightly wound through Yang's hair, arching her back with a kittenish murmur, skin against skin. Yang moans breathily against Blake's pulse, kissing under her jaw, fingers tracing up and down the backs of her waist. She pauses only to laugh against Blake's skin.

"What is it?" Blake asks, stealing another kiss from Yang's supple, open mouth before pulling away to look at her head on. Yang's hand has found its way back to the scar on Blake's chest, like they're magnetizing towards each other. She smiles at Blake through stray locks of hair.

"Blake," She asks very seriously. "What do you think of the word fate?"

Blake widens her eyes.

"I've never given it much thought before. What about you?"

Yang bites her lip like she's holding a secret and shakes her head. She kisses Blake's collar, dips her tongue into the velvet cradle of her clavicle. Blake wraps her into another kiss that knocks the wind out of both of them. When Yang sits back for the second time, there's a thrill in her eyes, shining like a supernova. It's clear that she knows something that Blake doesn't. Her smile is excited, her hands stretched across Blake's waist.

"I don't think I've properly understood it until now."


End file.
